Why would God oppose Balaam, with a donkey no less, when Balaam was enroute following God’s instruction?
Then Balak again sent leaders, more numerous and more distinguished than the former. They came to Balaam and said to him, “Thus says Balak the son of Zippor, ‘Let nothing, I beg you, hinder you from coming to me; for I will indeed honor you richly, and I will do whatever you say to me. Please come then, curse this people for me.’”
Balaam replied to the servants of Balak, “Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not do anything, either small or great, contrary to the command of the LORD my God. Now please, you also stay here tonight, and I will find out what else the LORD will speak to me.”
God came to Balaam at night and said to him, “If the men have come to call you, rise up. Go with them. But only the word which I speak to you shall you do.”
So Balaam arose in the morning, and saddled his donkey and went with the leaders of Moab.
But God was angry because he was going, and The Angel of the LORD took his stand in the way as an adversary against him.
When the donkey saw The Angel of the LORD standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand, the donkey turned off from the way and went into the field; but Balaam struck the donkey to turn her back into the way. Then The Angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path of the vineyards, with a wall on this side and a wall on that side. When the donkey saw The Angel of the LORD, she pressed herself to the wall and pressed Balaam’s foot against the wall, so he struck her again. The Angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn to the right hand or the left. When the donkey saw The Angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam; so Balaam was angry and struck the donkey with his stick. And the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” Then Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have made a mockery of me! If there had been a sword in my hand, I would have killed you by now.” The donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I ever been accustomed to do so to you?” And he said, “No.”
Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw The Angel of the LORD standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed all the way to the ground. The Angel of the LORD said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way was contrary to me. But the donkey saw me and turned aside from me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, I would surely have killed you just now, and let her live.” Numbers 22:15-33.
What? Why would God be angry? Didn’t He just give Balaam permission, indeed direction to go? Doesn’t this seem contradictory, even unfair?
To understand this scene, one needs to know the back story, most of which is not in this passage, and some of which is here but is subtle. The best commentary on Scripture is Scripture.
First, who is Balak and who are the Moabites over which he is king?
Remember Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who God forcibly expelled from Sodom just before its destruction? Hiding in the wilderness, his daughters were afraid of destitution and shame from being unmarried and childless, a certain fate in that culture. So they hatch a plan to get their father drunk, and then have sex and children by him. Gross, I know. One child born by that plan was Moab. The Moabites are his descendants.
The Moabites’ practices did not exceed their heritage. Their “worship” of pagan deities included dashing infants against rocks in ritual “sacrifice.”
The descendants of Moab and his brother Ammon, conceived in the same fashion, were excluded from temple worship, not because of their parentage, but because the Ammonites did not meet Israel with food and water as they came out of the Exodus from Egypt, and because the Moabites hired Balaam to curse the Israelites. Deuteronomy 23:1-6.
And who is Balaam? A diviner. Joshua 13:22. A very spiritual person who is greedy and willing to sell his spirituality and spiritual giftedness to the highest bidder. He hears from God, but coopts that precious gift for his personal profit. A for-profit prophet.
We see Balaam’s corruption in a later narrative of inciting the Moabite women to use their sexuality to compromise Israelites into idolatrous worship, resulting in judgment and death by plague. This became a well-known and notorious part of Israeli lore known as the affair of Peor. Peor was the geographic region where Balaam lived. See Numbers 25; 31:16; Deuteronomy 4:3; Joshua 22:16-20; Psalm 106:28-31; Hosea 9:10 (“But they came to Baal-Peor and devoted themselves to shame. They became as detestable as that which they loved.”).
God was not willing to listen to curses from Balaam, and ultimately turned Balaam’s curse into a blessing, because of God’s love for Israel. Deuteronomy 23:5. Balaam “had” to bless rather than curse because God required it of him. Joshua 24:9-10; Nehemiah 13:2.
Did you catch that? Although Balaam said in Numbers 22 that he could only say what God intended for him to say, the fact is, Balaam intended to curse. That is what he was hired to do. The words that came out of his mouth were in fact not a curse, but a blessing. But that is only because God turned what would have been Balaam’s curse into a blessing.
We get a detailed description of Balaam’s depravity from his being held up as an example. Peter describes in graphic detail the unrighteous kept for punishment for the day of judgment, and then summarizes them as those who follow the way of Balaam:
The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority.
Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties, 11 whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. 12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, 13 suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in theirdeceptions, as they carouse with you, 14 having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children; 15 forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; 16 but he received a rebuke for his own transgression. A mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.
17 These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. 18 For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, 19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. 20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. 22It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”
Balaam was driven by greed. He “loved the wages of unrighteousness.”
Similarly, Jesus’ brother, Jude, indicts Balaam as an exemplar of unrighteousness:
4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
5 Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
8 Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. 9 But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” 10 But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. 11 Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. 12 These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.
14 It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, 15 to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” 16 These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of advantage.
17 But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, 18 that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” 19 These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.
Jesus indicted the church a Pergamum “because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept the teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality.” Revelation 2:14.
Israel later executed Balaam for his role in inciting idolatry. Numbers 31:8; Joshua13:22.
Such is Balaam. Balaam was committed to leading others into immorality and idolatry. And profit from it. Balaam was not so surrendered to God as his statements in Numbers 22 make him sound.
With a more complete picture of Balaam, Numbers 22 makes more sense. God’s anger is completely understandable.
God had already said to Balaam, “Do not go with them; you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.” Numbers 22:12. God had already given a very clear answer to Balaam’s question after the previous envoy had arrived.
So why did Balaam asking a second time? He was hoping, desperately, greedily, for a different, “better” answer. Payment was implied with the first request. It was promised extravagantly and expressly with the second. “Please, God, change your mind. I want the money. Let me curse them.”
Of course God was angry. Yes, the second time God lets him go. But God will turn Balaam’s intended curse into a blessing. God is not angry because of what Balaam will do. That is under control.
God is angry because Balaam is willing to curse Israel, in direct contravention to what God has already told him, and for money. God is angry not for the externallity of going, but with Balaam’s heart, veiled in this narrative, but revealed in the pages of later scripture.
Balaam goes, but he is opposed by The Angel of the LORD – preincarnate Jesus, known as a “Christophony.” Balaam would have been slain, but for the miracle of his donkey seeing supernaturally and preventing disaster
With Balaam more fully understood, God’s opposition to him is completely understandable. The episode with the donkey is in fact gracious.
We love to judge God. Is He fair? Is He good? Is He timely? Much appears to us to be unfair, unjust, or evil tolerated. We blame God. In our judgment, God is not acting properly or timely enough.
Our judgment of God flows from being less perceptive than Balaam’s donkey.
And it is always dead wrong.
God is good. God is light; in Him there is no darkness. God is love itself.
God aches over evil, pain and injustice more than we do. We don’t see Him act because … we don’t know why. We do not see the end from the beginning, like He does.
Pray and keep on praying, we should. Jesus was clear about this. Paul exhorted it. Though we don’t understand all the whys, or God’s good and perfect will completely, we can and should ask and keep on asking.
There are no wrong prayers, but there are some prayers we need not pray. I need ask God if I should become a bank robber, be unfaithful to my wife, or deal dishonestly in my business. God has already answered those questions. And God is not a man that He is fickle. There are instances of God relenting from judgment in response to intercession. But this is His character. It is the mission of the Cross. But God never deviates from His purposes. With Him, and unlike us, yes is yes and no is no.
Balaam’s second request was not to invoke God’s forgiving and redemptive nature to relent from due judgment. It was for permission to commit evil for financial gain.
What does God’s revelation of Balaam say to us?
1. When God speaks the first time, we need not check back to see if He has changed His mind. We can take the first answer to the bank. And should.
What has God promised you, personally? You can stand on it for a lifetime.
What promises in Scripture are precious to you? You can stand on all of those, as well.
2. Our spiritual connection with God is not for our selfish indulgence. Ever. It is always for His purpose, one of which is the extraordinary gift of intimacy and relationship with Him. Another of which is the building of His kingdom, and service of others.
What are your spiritual gifts? Are you using them? How? How will they build God’s kingdom, and serve others in love?
3. When we butt up against obstacles that seem unfair, unreasonable, or unexplainable, see No. 1. What has God already spoken that might illuminate this situation? Even if we can’t understand it, look for God’s grace to help us in that time of need.
Does the circumstance appear contrary to God’s revealed will and purposes? If so, pray like Daniel in Daniel 9, when he discerned that the 70 years of captivity that God had decreed were up, and it was time for release.
And if it’s just a mystery, call on the Savior anyway. He loves to bear our burdens. He welcomes us into the throne room to find grace and help in time of need.
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